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Archive for the ‘Generation Of Vipers’ Category

I Timothy 4:1-3 Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.Proof of how we are in the latter days spoken of in the Bible: we give respect to fools. Christians bend over backwards to win the favor not of our God, but the world. We are all nice and accommodating to people who have rejected the truth. Now I am not talking about people who have never heard the truth, mere sinners, but people who have heard the truth and rejected it for the imaginations of their sinful hearts because they have chosen to reject the goodness of God in favor of the wickedness of the world. Now, the Bible plainly tells us to have nothing to do with these people (Psalm 1:1, II Timothy 3:5). Instead, we show them all sorts of deference and we accommodate them in every which way possible, to the point where we do not even preach the true gospel anymore. Now even if we aren’t going to do what is right in this manner for our own sakes, the fact that we are going to be judged and rewarded on how closely we adhere to God’s Commandments, don’t we have concern for our fellow man? Don’t we care that these people who knowingly reject God’s Word will go to the lake of fire when they die? How can we love them if this be the case? How is this loving our neighbor? The answer is simple: we do NOT love our neighbor. If we truly loved our neighbor, we would give our neighbor what is most important, which is the keys to eternal salvation. But we do not love our neighbor. We do not even love God. No, what we love is ourselves, and that is why we withhold the true gospel and withhold true worship from them, so that we can enjoy the pleasure of being held in high – or at least respectable – esteem in their eyes. We love ourselves so much that we are too proud and vain to suffer humiliation for Christ’s Name and count it all joy. We would rather be exalted by sinners on earth than by our righteous God in Heaven, even to the point of knowingly allowing those that exalt us are going straight to eternal damnation. That makes us a generation of vipers!

That means that we have to change. The church has to change. Either reform the religious system that we have around that prides itself on being so collegial so that it can remain relevant in and influential to this desperately wicked world because of Christians who simply cannot bring themselves to let go of the world, or leave the religious system all together. We are not helping the wicked by shutting our mouths and playing nice. We only help them by showing them that according to the Word of God they are condemned, and if they continue to reject His Truth they will surely die. We need to show them that living a lie may allow them to continue in sin for a short time, but it is not worth paying for the decision to reject God for eternity. No, they will not be paying for their sins: that is false doctrine. Jesus Christ paid for all sin on the cross with His life and blood. No, what they will be paying for is their decision to reject Christ just so that they can stay in sin. Those of us who allow them to make and adhere to that decision without a vigorous challenge? We will certainly pay for our rebellion against God.

We will pay for not giving the naked clothes, the sick medicine, the prisoners comfort, or the hungry food. Do not be deceived: Matthew 25:34 – 46 does not only refer to meeting people’s physical needs, it refers to giving them the gospel! When a person is unsaved, then his spirit is naked, ill, hungry, and in prison! That is how our spirits were once, remember? But someone shared the gospel with us so that we could be placed in Christ so that these good works could be done unto our spirits. How can we then turn around and not allow Christ to do for someone else’s spirit what was done for ours? Proof of Matthew 25:34 – 46 double – referencing a spiritual condition can be found in Revelation 3:16 – 19 about the Laodicean church. Now these folks were very wealthy in terms of economics, but their SPIRITS were wretched, miserable, poor, naked, and blind! Why? Because the truth was not being preached in that church, just as the truth is not being preached today.

What truth is that? Salvation by grace alone! Not “many paths to Heaven.” Not “holiness or hell” legalism. Not tradition, rituals, idolatry, and unacceptable sacrifices. Not denominationalism. Not modernist philosophy. Not works. No, but salvation by grace alone! The amazing thing is that you do not have to preach works or legalism if you preach Christ. If you preach salvation by grace alone, you will show people that first they are sinners, but by Christ’s Blood alone, they are set free. Once they are given and accept that knowledge, they will WANT to obey Christ. They will WANT to do works. Why? Not because of what you preach. That is the problem today: people think that they have to cajole, motivate, and frighten people into being holy. Well, that is the mark of someone who is not called by God, not spirit filled, and who himself has no knowledge of the

kingdom of
God. No, if you preach grace through Christ and someone accepts grace through Christ, that person will want to stop sinning and start bearing fruit because of the workings of the Holy Spirit within their hearts. This “Christianity by numbers” is creating a bunch of people who A) are false converts and not truly saved or B) saved but lack revelation! Instead of trying to impart some mass produced easy to buy and consume form of righteousness through the religious system, we need to preach grace to people so that they can truly accept the grace of God through faith in Christ, be placed in Christ by God, and then know the grace of God through revelation! It is not the job of the church to guide people to righteousness. It is the job of the church to show people Christ so that the Holy Spirit can enter into them and reveal righteousness through them. How can man, or a system made by man, reveal righteousness when man is not righteous? How can you show someone when it is not in you, possessed by you, or even known by you? You cannot, and you should not try. All that you should do is take a person who desires to be saved from the lake of fire – or who does not even know that he is in danger of the lake of fire – and show that person Christ so that person might obtain and know righteousness by Christ. Well, how can someone who has been made righteous and made to know righteousness through Christ not be able to do this? Because our righteousness is only in and through Christ, and once you follow the religious system, you forsake Christ and His righteousness for something that is man – made and corrupt. Your spirit will still be righteous, but your works will not be, because they will be secular, worldly, flesh.

That is why when the religious people came to John the Baptist to be baptized, he didn’t be nice to them(Matthew 3:6 – 11). He called them out! He told them to their faces and before the world that they were evil, and that they were in danger of destruction. What is more: he further told them that merely being baptized was not enough! “Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance” (Matthew 3:8)? That meant do not be as Cain, who brought an unacceptable sacrifice to God, but rather be as Abel, who gave to God his best out of the desire to please God in his heart (Genesis 4:4, Hebrews 11:4)! See, though they came to be baptized, they were not as the others, who came seeking to be made righteous. No, they came believing that since they were not only Jews but religious Jews, and even then of the religious subculture and profession (think pastors, theologians, seminary leaders, and the like), that they were already righteous. They were not coming seeking salvation, but to add to the salvation that they already believed themselves to have. So to them, getting baptized by John was not an act of offering themselves to God in repentance to ask His Forgiveness, but just another way to publicly outwardly confirm to everyone else and to add to the righteousness that they thought they already had as a result of a law that they were not keeping and a heritage which they had betrayed. But note that John the Baptist did not suffer that mess. He told them that they dare not defy God by getting baptized with sinful hearts and evil motivations, which would not only provoke God to anger against them but actually add to their sin. Especially take note of how John the Baptist did not care about offending them. No, he cared about offending GOD by allowing people with circumcised flesh but uncircumcised hearts profane what was holy with their uncircumcision, with the filthy abominations of their minds and hearts though their flesh was clean!

John the Baptist’s attitude was: “I am going to tell you that you are a sinner and you need to change, and unless you change, this act of baptism not only will not help you, but it will do you more harm than good. If having the wickedness of your heart confronted and exposed offends you, fine, leave, who needs you. But if it causes you to acknowledge that you are not righteous and thus desire for your sins to be washed away, that’s fine too, come get baptized. But either way, I am still going to be here baptizing people, and as long as I am here baptizing people God is going to send me those who fear Him and are broken – hearted and anguished because of their sin to be baptized.” In other words, “I don’t need you, you need God!” Now contrast that to what goes on in today’s religious environment. A modern preacher would have decided that “If I tell these people that they are sinners, they will leave, and tell their friends about me, and their friends won’t come either, so there won’t be anybody for me to baptize. So, I will go ahead and baptize them, and maybe it will do them some good; maybe it will cause them to repent later.” That is precisely the attitude that we have when we allow sinners to come up and sit in the church year after year, and not only that we put them on the church rolls, let them sing in the choir, advance to church leadership positions, and even become preachers themselves.

We think that we just can’t kick them out of the church, because they will go to hell, but if we keep them coming, maybe we can change them. Never mind that they can do just as good a job of going to hell in the church as in the streets. Never mind that no church in the history of the world has ever saved anyone, because the church can’t save anyone. It is GOD who saves people who acknowledge that they are sinners and come to Christ because of it. So long as you allow that sinner to continue to come to church and participate in it, he may NEVER acknowledge that he is a sinner who needs Christ, because just like the Pharisees, scribes, and Sadducees who came to be baptized by John, they will think that they are OK because they are members of a church. They will think that they are OK because the religious system suppresses and ultimately drives off the John the Baptists among us whose job it is to tell them that they are not! There is no one to tell them that I do not care how holy you are living, I do not care how you pray, fast, speak in tongues, and shout, I do not care what denomination you are, or how you never miss Communion, or how long you have been a member of this church, until you admit that you are a sinner and that you need Christ to save you, you are still on your way to hell!

If your church is harboring sinners without confronting them; if the message being taught by the preacher and sung by the choir does not challenge them, if the daily lives of church members does not challenge them, then you really need to pray and ask God if you are in the right place. Instead of being bad with a group of people, you may need to go off and be GOOD by yourself! You may need to go someplace where God will allow you to confront sin and sinners. Why? Because it is doing a good work, a good thing to sinners to reveal to them what they truly are so that they might be saved. When it gets down to it, there is no way to love a sinner except by showing him Christ. If you do not love a sinner in this fashion, then you do not love your neighbor. You cannot love God whom you do not see if you do not love your neighbor whom you do see. So, if your neighbor is a sinner, the only way that you can love God is to show that sinner the very same God through Christ. If you are unwilling to show a sinner the truth if for no reason other than concern for his eternal fate, and if you support a religious system that withholds the truth of God’s grace to a sinner, then the love of God is not in you. If you yourself or anything that you support contributes to the leading of sinners to destruction, then you are not a true believer in Christ and a member of the body of Christ. Rather, you are a viper and a member of the generation of vipers, and you are headed for the same eternal damnation as the sinner whom you are failing to share the truth of Christ with because of your love of the world, including the manly religious system that you dare to offend God by calling a “church.” The true church is the body of Christ, and members of the true church are working to bring people to Christ, and not leave them naked, hungry, and wretched in prison.

Prayer:

Father God in the Name of Jesus Christ, if I am a viper, please deliver me from it. Please, Lord, I am a sinner, am very sorry for my sins, and I renounce and reject my sins and do not want to do them any more. Please forgive me, Lord. I accept Jesus Christ, whom is Your Son raised from the dead, as my Lord and Savior, and know that because of this alone I am now saved. Thank you, Lord, for saving me! Father God, now that I am no longer a viper, or if I never was one, please Lord lead me to share the truth, the true gospel, with sinners so that I might love my neighbor and thereby love you. In the Name of Jesus Christ, amen! Deliverance:

The demon that works in this area is worldliness. Please read the Basic Spiritual Warfare guide to learn more about how to go against these demons to help set captives free and win battles in the name of your God through the power, authority, and victory given to you by his Son Jesus Christ and by his blood shed for you!